A dream which is not explained is like a letter which has not been read. - Talmud

My fascination with dreams started a few decades ago when I first read Carl Jung's "Man and His Symbols". If you enjoy studying dreams but get stuck on some of the symbolism in them, perhaps you will find my personal Dream Dictionary useful. It is an ever-expanding collection of words and their potential meanings culled from various dream publications, online sources, and my own research. Trying to define what something means in a dream is largely dependent on the context in which the symbol appears, as well as the surrounding dream events. As such, most words in the dictionary contains multiple definitions to better help with an accurate interpretation.

If you cannot find a word in the dictionary and would like me to research it for you - or if you are interested in a free, amateur dream interpretation, please e-mail me. All queries are welcomed and will be kept confidential.

Click on a letter to search alphabetically through the dream symbols:

There are many schools of thought on why human beings dream and how best to interpret them. Below, is a list of some interesting sites dealing with dreams, symbolism, and general psychology:

Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism
C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles
Encyclopedia of Western Symbols & Ideograms
Dictionary, Thesaurus & Language Translator
Jung Myers-Briggs Typology Test
The Quantitative Study of Dreams
The Dream Tree
DreamBank

Several people have sent me dreams containing scenes or images that they are distressed by. Dreams often contain big 'feeling statements' that cannot be reproduced in waking life - either because the action would be socially unacceptable or the feeling might be too painful, embarrassing, or confusing to consciously acknowledge. Rest assured, you are not the only "freak" out there - as proven by some of my early dreams, transcribed verbatum from old journals, below:

FLYING VAMPIRE - AGE 19
I dreamt I was a flying vampire last night. I was chasing a male vampire through an old mission-type courtyard (like the Spanish missions). I haven't had a flying dream in a long time. Delusions of grandeur? Being a bat is strange. I flew over water. A port. There was a small roadside prison and a ticket booth. I think [my neighbor] Bill was in it. He seems to be in a lot of my adventure dreams. Dreams. I wish I could analyze them a little better...

CRYSTAL DANCE - AGE 20
I attended a ballet and every dancer had crystals on their bodies. One of the dancers (female) had a crystal wand on the top of her head that was identical to mine. I was in the balcony level of the audience sitting next to people I know but can't remember. When I saw the wand, I grabbed my own and showed it off to the people around me. I became very giddy and lost verbal control. A man who sat next to me got up and angrily accused me of being drunk. I could only laugh and carry on. I didn't feel drunk, just happily out of control. Happy, until I noticed the other members of the audience staring at me thinking I was drunk too. I suddenly felt terribly misunderstood, but I continued my verbal flurry anyway. I opened my eyes to [my cat] Glaam who was giving me her daily wake-up licks.

CANNED FETUS - AGE 20
I had a dream that I was peering into a tin can. There was a fetus inside-- a human fetus which turned into an orange cat before my eyes. The can had two punctures in it. I blew into one of them to start the life.

KISS OF DEATH - AGE 20
I was at a resort where people were aging very quickly. I, for some reason, was not. My friend, Kris, was there briefly, helping me collect pistachio nuts off the ground as we felt there was some kind of link to the aging factor-- perhaps a secret plot. I bumped into [ex-boyfriend] Christopher. He was aging and cried on my shoulder. I hugged him.

At one point, I walked by an office in which I had previously seen the caretaker inside. The room appeared empty this time, so I went to open the door (brass knob) and just as I did, a man dressed in dark clothing walked out. I was startled, but the man smiled as if he knew me. He said something nice which I can't recall.

I followed a group of people into a rustic, brightly lit room where two men lay. The first man said he had just turned one hundred years old and, as he said this, died. He didn't look a hundred years old. The second man asked me to come over to him. He was ninety and laying near a window with a blanket covering his torso. He looked his age. He asked me to kiss him on the lips, which I hesitated to do. I couldn't understand why he was smiling. As I bent down, I mumbled, "Kiss of death" and then gently kissed him. He continued to smile. I don't remember if he died or not.

The scene changed (or I woke up briefly and went into another dream) where I was riding in a convertible with Kevin through streets that were known to me (such as Pelham and Verbena) but they weren't connected in a logical order and looked nothing like their names. It was a gorgeous, sunny day out and it felt great to be riding in the hills.

GOTHIC HOTEL - AGE 20
I was with a pretty young woman who was dressed in an ornately beaded black dress (kind of a 30's style costume with plumes in her hair). We had apparently dressed up in these disguises in order to escape the huge house we were trapped in. It looked like an old hotel, with dark wood inlay everywhere, very ornate, no windows except, perhaps, a stained glass one in the lobby area.

We ran down one of the hallways whistling English folk tunes and ended up in the lobby where there was an old, dark wooden cashier's stand. There was a man behind the stand. The woman I was with turned into a very good-looking man (with the same coloring as his female counterpart). He was tasting some Yorkshire pudding or a cake and, in a funny yet horrid British accent said, "This is the best -?- I've ever had." The cashier man looked at him queerly and said, "No it isn't," to which my companion and I did a Marx Bros. type of exit from the site.

The scene switched to outside at dusk. I was with the girl again, I think, at first-- then I was with [my boyfriend] Steve's mother, who wanted to go to this surfer shoe shop we had apparently seen earlier. When we arrived at the shop, it appeared to be closed yet the lights were on inside. A van full of surfers pulled up and started chatting with us. One of them had on black and white checked shoes like the ones Jeff Spicoli wore in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High". Their van was a forest green color. A turtle was involved here somehow but I can't remember any details.

I started to walk around the area. It was nighttime now and all the lights came on from the various shops and buildings. There was a large, white hotel-like building to the right of the smaller buildings and a darker, perhaps six-story building to the left. The white building was farther in the distance, past a group of trees.

Several people moved about in the center of the buildings, mostly guys who looked like they were taking a coffee break. The surfers joined them. The ground was unpaved, like a dusty dirt road in a cowboy set. An open doorway which kind of looked like a barn, revealed a smoke-filled room. As people cleared away from the doorway, I could see Stephen Stills sitting on a chair playing his guitar. I assumed he was playing a gig at the hotel or resort. I got excited when I saw him and searched for others in the road crew who could tell me what the story was. I thought I saw Kenny coming out of the barn-like building with a cup in his hand and called out his name, but it turned out to be someone else.

I looked back toward the white hotel structure, across what now appeared to be a flat, gray-green marsh which was illuminated by a full moon. I started to walk across it and realized it was watery mud. I was up to my ankles in it, kind of stuck, but moving farther into it willingly. At some point, I turned around to find the same young woman who was in the first part of the dream running up behind me. She sloshed her way into the mud, appearing concerned for me. She took my arm and started to guide me back to the shore. As I looked to my left, I noticed a whole roasting chicken sitting in the shallow part of the mud near the bank. Next to it were the remains of some animal, bones mostly, much bigger than the chicken.

As the girl led me to shallow ground, she said something like, "You should be more careful." It was as if I'd become feeble and old, of bad health. She made a reference to dying and I said, "Don't worry. I'll last for years and years, probably longer than you..." We laughed hysterically at that as we continued to walk arm and arm. I finally looked down at my hands and realized they were black, old and withered. For some reason, I felt I had turned into Harriet Tubman.

EIGHT CATS AND A HORSE - AGE 22
I had a dream last night which featured eight black cats. They looked the same as my two. Ginger, the white cat from next door, was also in the dream. She was sitting on a bunch of dishes in the sink, directly under a tap of running water. Her belly became soaked. I thought that was pretty strange because cats normally hate water.

The cat dream was followed by another dream, much vaguer. Something about riding bareback on a gray horse. The horse shit all over my left shirt sleeve...

DUMPSTER ROMANCE - AGE 25
I was in a trash bin with a 12-year-old boy. There were dead, decaying bodies in the dumpster with us and we huddled together for warmth using the bodies as seats.

Prior to this image, there was a another where I was sitting somewhere with a man on one side of me (whom I knew) and the boy on the other. The boy put his hand on my leg and I felt extremely excited by his touch. I did not want to let the man know how I felt.

It wasn't until I returned from a search (for food?) to the trash bin and found the boy had become gravely ill that I began to feel maternal rather than romantic towards him. Somehow I associated our being in a dumpster as having no other choice. That's where we lived. (post nuclear war?) I tried as best I could to comfort him, feeling as though I would do anything to protect him.